Middle East Quarterly

• Jail for Iranian Journalists
  by Arash Sigarchi
• Iran's Revolutionary Guards - A Rogue Outfit?
  by Michael Rubin

Get Involved with the MEF

• Campus Activities
• Donations
• Employment & Internships

Articles by MEF Staff

• Obama or McCain, Iran stance won't change
  by Michael Rubin
• Boxed In: Containing a Nuclear Iran
  by Michael Rubin

MEF Wires

• "My Pentagon Years"
  by Douglas J. Feith
• What's at Stake for the West in Lebanon?
  by David Wurmser

Forthcoming Events

• Andrew McCarthy:
  Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad
  

Press Releases

• Irfan Yusuf Apologizes Again to Daniel Pipes
  October 1
• Irfan Yusuf Apologizes to Daniel Pipes
  September 17

Most Viewed Articles

1. Assessing English Translations of the Qur'an
2. Iran's Revolutionary Guards - A Rogue Outfit?
3. Beheading in the Name of Islam
4. The Middle East's Tribal DNA
5. Ahmadinejad and the Mahdi

Most Mailed Articles

1. Obama or McCain, Iran stance won't change
2. Iran's Revolutionary Guards - A Rogue Outfit?
3. The Middle East's Tribal DNA
4. Does Islam Justify Honor Killings?
5. Sharia Law: Coming to a Western Nation Near You?

SEPTEMBER 1996 • VOLUME III: NUMBER 3

Subscribe   |    Archive   |    Submit Manuscript   |    Board of Editors   |    Contact Editor   |

A Black Corps d'Elite
An Egyptian Sudanese Conscript Battalion with the French Army in Mexico, 1863-1867

by Richard Hill and Peter Hogg
East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995. 214 pp. .

Reviewed by Daniel Pipes

Middle East Quarterly
September 1996

Print

Send

RSS

For several years, the armies of Napoleon III deployed some 450 Muslim Sudanese slave soldiers in Veracruz, the port of Mexico City. As in the other case of Western hemisphere military slavery (the West India Regiments, a British unit in existence 1795-1815), the Sudanese were imported from Africa in the hopes that they would better survive the tropical diseases that so terribly afflicted European soldiers. In both cases, the Africans did indeed fulfill these expectations.

The mixture of cultures embodied by this event has piqued the interest of several historians, so it is by no means unknown. Hill and Hogg provide a particularly thorough, if unimaginative, account of this exotic interlude, explaining its background, looking in detail at the battle record in Mexico, and figuring out who exactly made up the battalion. Much in their account is odd and interesting, for example, the Sudanese superiority to Austrian troops 71 and their festive nine-day spree in Paris on the emperor's tab. 116-7 The authors also assess the episode's longer-term impact on the Sudan, showing that the veterans of Mexico, having learnt much from their extended exposure to French military practices, rose quickly in the ranks, then taught these methods to others.

It bears noting that Hill, a life-long student of the Sudan, published Black Corps in his 94th year; and that he recently died at age 95, in March 1996.

To receive articles regularly by email, join the MEF News mailing list.
To receive the full, printed version of the Middle East Quarterly, please see details about an affordable subscription.

Related Items

• Other items from the September 1996 Middle East Quarterly
• Other items by Daniel Pipes